4 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



fatal to his craft and himself. In that time no one thought of the 

 wind as anything but hostile to the mariner. But the time came 

 with the greater development of knowledge when the wind ceased 

 to be hostile and became a friend. Then there was advance after 

 advance until the sailor began to dread the calms which his fore- 

 runners had courted, and to pray for the strong breezes that had 

 been to his ancestors things to dread. Finally, the time came when 

 the winds carried clipper ships across the widest oceans, and it 

 became almost inconceivable to the world how commerce could 

 be carried forward without the aid of winds. 



As the primitive sailor feared the storm so the early arctic ex- 

 plorer dreaded the winter. This dread gradually became less until 

 there appeared the men who turned winter into a friend as the 

 sailors had done with the gale. The leader among these was Peary, 

 who saw that the cold should not be avoided but courted, and that 

 the most successful journeys could be made in the winter, be- 

 ginning in January or February, and should come to an end on any 

 properly managed expedition by April, before the first thaw. A 

 calm used to be ideal for paddling, and ideal for that it remains to 

 this day, but paddling is not now a serious occupation. To Peary 

 at work on the polar ice the warmth of summer was as welcome as 

 a calm to Nelson at the hour of battle. 



In the first stage of exploration the polar winter was considered 

 so dreadful that it could not be endured; in the second stage it was 

 dreadful, though it could and had to be endured, and no work could 

 be done till it was nearly over; in the third stage it was not only 

 neither dreadful nor difficult to endure, but was the season when 

 work could be done most easily, and was therefore preferable to 

 summer. Apparently the limit of progress had been attained in 

 this direction. But just as steam altered navigation and brought 

 back the time when a calm is more agreeable and valuable than 

 a strong breeze, so there was possible in arctic exploration an ad- 

 vance which would again bring summer into a degree of favor, 

 although it did not discard use of the winter cold as steam naviga- 

 tion has discarded use of the wind. 



Explorers of the Peary type might no longer dread the winter, 

 but there was another arctic condition which to them was still full 

 of menace. Though traveling could be done and had to be done 

 in winter, it was laborious, fraught with hardships, and had to be 

 limited because of the difficulty of transporting enough food for 

 men and dogs. It was universally conceived that an ice-covered 

 arctic sea could supply neither suitable food nor suitable fuel in 



